Motorhome claims can be deer!

Motorhome insurance is there to protect you against a bump from an unscrupulous road hog, but it’s the real life four legged critters you need to watch out for as well.

We’ve had numerous claims in the last 12 months involving all manners of wild animals including horses, badgers, deer, owls and pheasants to name but a few. Claims Liaison Officer, Sharon Hudson, has this to say about this unexpected hazard,

“It’s surprising how many claims we have involving animals during the course of a year, particularly wild animals such as pheasants and deer which are fairly common in rural areas, exactly the places motorhomers like to visit.”

One of the most unusual claims was for an impact involving, in the motorhomers own words, “an owl and whatever it was carrying”, which we can only assume was something relatively small such as a field mouse and hopefully not a farmers cat!

Of course it’s inevitable that some motorhomers will encounter animals in the road, particularly when driving on more rural A or B roads, perhaps on the way to a campsite, so driving carefully and keeping an eye on the edge of the road for anything that could run across is always a good idea.

Hitting an animal while motorhoming is not a very nice experience for anyone but in many cases it is unavoidable as the animal enters the road giving the driver little time to manouvere out of the way. The motorhome won’t come away scratch-free either though, and will take varying degrees of damage depending on your driving speed, and the size of animal hit. Sharon explains,

“Obviously when an impact with a large animal such as a Deer or Horse occurs there is always going to be substantial damage, but smaller animals can also cause huge damage as the driver may lose control of the vehicle and crash into a stationary object or other road user. The average cost of a claim involving an animal is around £1,900 but we had one instance this year, when a customer hit a Deer with their motorhome, where the cost of repair was around £4,000.”